AMY RAY

Amy Ray may be the one person alive who wouldn't mind going back to high school. Her newest solo album, Prom, tackles the heady brew of identity, community and the heaps of hormones that are born of the high school years. The mandatory Amy Ray political overtones make appearances, but the overwhelming aura of Prom is all about those four turbulent years. \nBut Ray didn't initially set out to write an album about high school. \n"I just started writing songs," Ray said. "I was really thinking about camaraderie, and your relationship to authority, and your identity, and your community, and how those things form. And that always took me back to high school, either people I know who are in high school now, or my own high school experience. I just wrote stories."\nRay, who has been performing along with Emily Saliers as the Indigo Girls since the 1980s, said her solo career is more about her dedication to grassroots music than a desire to perform by herself.\n"Really, a lot of it has to do with the independent community -- playing in clubs, working with indie media, working with independent record stores. The whole infrastructure is different," she said.\nIt's been a year since the last Indigo Girls' release, All that We Let In, but Ray acknowledges that there are certain benefits that solo work affords. \n"Yeah, it's hard, because my partnership with Emily is so good. I feel like (my solo career and my work with the Indigo Girls) are both positive. There's not exclusivity. When I'm independent, I really just sing about whatever, there's no dilution of ideas because it's a partnership. It's a good way to be unchecked. That doesn't always end up being a good thing, though," Ray laughed. "I really do enjoy the independent community, playing in a band, doing everything myself. It's more of a do-it-yourself kind of thing."\nBut even the most dedicated do-it-yourself chick can't do it all herself. Jamming and collaboration still form a core part of Ray's creative process. \n"Before I started doing solo records, I'd just jam with people and it didn't really have any purpose," she said. "But then it was going so well that I was like, I'm gonna make a record. If I hear a band I really love, I start fantasizing about doing a song with them, I think about what song would I write, what would it be like, that sort of thing."\nSo who is Amy Ray fantasizing about right now?\n"That's a good question," Ray laughed. "There is a band in Atlanta, who's huge, called Outkast, and I want so bad for Andre to do a remix of some of the songs on this record. He's so talented. I know people who know them, but I haven't even approached it."\nHip-hop heavyhitters aside, Ray's dedication to unknowns and grassroots bands still guides her collaboration decisions. \nEven so, she's not one to deny the role of luck in music making.\n"There's a band called Tenement Halls I'd love to work with, and this band from Oregon called the Organ. It's all women, but they sound like Echo and the Bunnymen or the Smiths. But some of the ones on your list you never get to do, because they're just fantasies. And then the ones that happen are things that you didn't even think of, and then they turn out so well, you're like, wow, I'm glad that happened." \nIt was Ray's dedication to grassroots music that led her to start Daemon Records in 1990, a not-for-profit label started to facilitate artistic expression outside the confines of corporate label direction. As the artist roster for Daemon expands with each passing year, Ray said it becomes more and more important that she integrate her music, her work with the label and her political activism. For instance, Ray said when the Indigo Girls are on tour, they usually feature a Daemon artist as an opening act, and when a new cause sparks her interest she uses the Daemon Web site as a launching pad for spreading the word. Still, the demands on Ray's time become taxing. \n"There might be a point where it needs a sabbatical, where the little Daemon dog needs to sit back and think about its life a little," Ray said. "But I always want to be involved in the music community. I try really hard not to compartmentalize. It keeps you from going crazy, because then you don't feel like your head is in five different parts."\nBut she's not a poor overworked, underappreciated rock star -- Prom has been getting rave reviews. And for Ray, taking it back to high school wasn't an exercise in exorcism. Her high school demons are remarkably few, and the high school atmosphere looms large on Prom. \n"When I look back on high school, I don't think miserable or happy, I think whoa, that was full of energy. It was really charged, it was a time when everybody was forming and evolving constantly. It was really amazing. And even when I was going through it I felt that way about it."\nBut being the class president, a yearbook photographer and a track team member didn't mean that Ray's high school years were marked by easy popularity. Like many high schoolers working out their identity, Ray was both a joiner and a loner, an athlete and an outcast. \n"I was a tomboy, and then I figured out I was gay my senior year, and I didn't really know what to call it," Ray said. "There was a lot of struggle, but I think everybody has that in some way. That's the thing about high school -- no matter how popular you are, you still feel like an outsider. \nAnd because so many of her listeners have high school experiences in common, Ray saw it as a way to draw people together. \n"I love that thing that we all have in common from that time," Ray said. "I don't love it like it's fun, but it's a phenomenon. You can talk to the most popular person, and they're suffering, they're not even enjoying their popularity. I think it's hormones or something. You mix all that together and it's a powerful brew. I would look around me and just feel like everything was so alive"